Bronte used to live at a commercial caged egg farm in northern Victoria. The farmer got rid of all his hens, most likely due to closing down his business or due to early depopulation (these girls were a lot younger than the usual 18 month olds that get sent to slaughter), and sent all of his hens to slaughter. She was grabbed from her cage and put in to a tiny crate with about 40 other hens and then that crate was stacked on to a truck with thousands of other hens.
Bronte was squashed in to that crate on that truck for nearly 4 hours. Many of the hens around her died during the journey. When the truck arrived at the abattoir, the crates were unloaded and thousands of girls were left there all night in the freezing cold in crates until killing started at 6 am the next day.
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Bronte was lucky, she was rescued that night ( August 17, 2016). She was rescued along with 73 other lucky hens. When I took her out of that crate at the abattoir, she screamed so loudly in terror that I had to get her out of there quite quickly. She was lucky. One in a millions who has been saved from the last line of horrors that egg laying hens go through.